Financial disaster preparedness is a growing concern in Latin America and the Caribbean. Last year the region saw devastating earthquakes in Chile and Haiti and an active hurricane season that impacted Central America and Mexico. In addition, the La Niña-related weather phenomenon has brought severe flooding to Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil, among others.

The IDB member countries of the English-speaking Caribbean – The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago – along with Dutch-speaking Suriname, are brought together by commerce, geography, history and traditions. Their economic situation and development challenges, however, may vary widely.

Latin American and Caribbean leaders expect per capita income to fall or grow moderately in the 2009–2012 period and governments to rely more on financing from international institutions, according to a survey by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The expectations contrast sharply with the recent economic performance in the region, where product per capita grew 4.1 percent annually in the past five years.

Since the mid-1990s the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has been the leading source of multilateral financing for Colombia. Over the last 50 years, the IDB has approved more than US$14.8 billion in loans and non-refundable technical cooperation projects for Colombia.
Throughout its history, the IDB has supported the Colombian government and private sector in key development areas such as infrastructure, state modernization and reform, small and medium enterprise, agriculture, energy, climate change and environmental protection.

By Luis Alberto Moreno*As delegates gathered at the IV World Water Forum in Mexico City earlier this month, many were asking whether the private sector still has a role to play in solving the critical sanitation problems of the developing world.

Increased investment, low inflation, an improved fiscal situation, decreased unemployment. Latin America and the Caribbean have been hearing plenty of good news the past 18 months.
A group of renowned economists analyzed the situation at a seminar hosted by the IDB Research Department to honor IDB President Enrique V. Iglesias, who will retire on September 30. Iglesias himself opened the seminar, which was chaired by IDB Chief Economist Guillermo Calvo, with the participation of Ricardo Hausmann, Michael Mussa, José Antonio Ocampo and John Williamson.

Remittances and a cross-border network of businesses, nonprofits, credit unions, microfinance institutions and other financial players are connected through a debit and stored-value card platform that has one very simple result: everybody wins. The business model, combining efficient use of technology with cheaper remittances transactions and better business for financial institutions, was presented at IDB headquarters by UCLA professor and successful entrepreneur Raúl Hinojosa.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which takes effect on Feb. 16, brings Latin America and the Caribbean an opportunity to link sustainable economic development with environmental protection. Under the Kyoto Protocol, roughly 30 of the world’s industrialized nations have agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2012.

If Central America wants to improve social equity and achieve fast and continuous economic growth, its countries need to increase tax collection and modernize their tax systems, according to a recent study by IDB economists Manuel R. Agosin and Roberto Machado entitled Tax Reform and Human Development in Central America.
Regional tax reform is necessary because “Central American states are too small and vulnerable to provide essential public goods for the economic growth and the people’s well being.”

They belong to the middle class, have university degrees and on average begin to think about being entrepreneurs at 25, but they do not open their first company until about 5 years later. These are the characteristics that define the young Latin American entrepreneurs, according to a recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank that is the subject of the book Desarrollo Emprendedor (published in Spanish and available in English in the fall).